Selenium - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table Chemistry in its element: selenium (Promo) You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (End promo) Chris Smith Hello, this week flaky scalps, skunks, dead polo ponies and an element that makes you stink of garlic. Yum! But it's not all bad news. Bernie Bulkin We know selenium is there, right under sulfur, in the periodic table, but it doesn't get much attention. The inorganic chemistry textbooks that I studied from talk extensively about sulphur and, where appropriate, say things like 'selenium also forms similar acids', or 'selenium also has many allotropic forms'. How slighted is this important element! When I was in my early 20s I developed a dry scalp condition for a few years, probably a result of anxiety over research grants I was trying to obtain. The treatment for this was a shampoo containing selenium sulphide, surprising to me because I thought that selenium was highly toxic. In fact a little investigation showed me that it was perfectly safe in small amounts.

Selenium is one of those all too common elements that is essential to life in small quantities, and very toxic in larger quantities. 400 micrograms per day is set as the safe upper intake level in humans. But we require it as part of various enzymes, such as glutathione peroxidase, as well as in the thyroid. It is widespread, and accumulated in various foods, such as nuts, tuna, and lobster, so it is rare for humans to have a selenium deficiency. But for horses, with their more limited diet, selenium deficiency is common and often corrected with dietary supplements. Again, this requires great care. Recently 21 polo horses died from selenium overdose in Florida, the result of a veterinary pharmacist overdoing it in mixing the drugs. It was Berzelius who discovered selenium in 1817, as an impurity in sulphuric acid. Tellurium had already been discovered, and named after the Greek word for earth, so he named selenium using the Greek word for moon, selene. It occurs in various minerals, together with sulphur as you would expect.

We know its evolution in plants goes back a long ways, because we find selenium compounds in coals, and much of what is released into the atmosphere today comes from coal burning. Indeed, the toxicity level of selenium to humans was established only 20 years ago by studies of Chinese victims of selenium poisoning, selenosis, who grew corn on selenium rich coal rocks. Selenosis has some lovely symptoms: a garlic odor on the breath, hair loss, sloughing of nails, fatigue, irritability, and eventually cirrhosis of the liver and death. It is the selenates and selenites that are the most toxic, since the elemental selenium is not readily incorporated into biological processes. While some of the allotropic forms of selenium resemble those that we know well from study of sulphur, there are others that are different. Most important, so called gray selenium consists of long chains of atoms forming extended helical structures. While selenium is not a metallic element, gray selenium is a good photoconductor, and was used in early photocells. Subsequently, selenium and various selenium compounds have been used in a variety of photoconductor and photovoltaic applications.

Indeed, the newest and most promising class of mass produced solar cells are copper indium gallium selenide. At one time virtually all copying machines used selenium ; this has now been largely replaced by organic photoconductors. But the diversity of uses of selenium does not stop with shampoo and horse food supplements and photovoltaics. Selenium is added to synthetic rubber to improve resistance to abrasion, it has been added to brass, along with bismuth, to replace lead in pipes, and it is used, as sodium selenate, as an insecticide to stop attacks on flowering plants such as chrysanthemums and carnations. Selenium in its allotropic red form is added to glass to give it a scarlet color, but it also can be used to remove the greenish tint sometimes found in glass due to iron compounds. There have been numerous studies, none of them very conclusive, about the possible role of selenium in cancer prevention, and in increasing the efficacy of chemotherapy. Most of these seem to indicate that if it is effective at all, it works somehow in conjunction with vitamin E, which, like selenium, plays an antioxidant role in the body.

Also intriguing to me was a recent study indicating that selenium deficient soils may play a role in susceptibility to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The rationale is that low selenium levels are associated with weakened immune systems, since with lack of antioxidant capacity there is stress on the immune system. But I save the best occurrence of selenium in nature for last. Butyl seleno mercaptan is the essential ingredient of skunk smell, and is certainly a contender for the title of the worst smelling compound. Once you have smelled it you will never forget it, nor underestimate the impact that this interesting element can have. Chris Smith So it can clear up an itchy scalp but it might make you stink in the process. That was Cambridge University's Bernie Bulkin with the story of Selenium. Next week we're visiting the element that Superman made famous. Angelos Michaelides Krypton is a fictional planet in the DC Comics universe, and the native world of the super-heroes Superman, Supergirl, and Krypto the "super dog". Krypton has been portrayed consistently as having been destroyed just after Superman's flight from the planet, with exact details of its destruction varying by time period, writers and franchise.

So much for trying to do a "wikipedia" search for this "hidden" element! Chris Smith And you can catch the facts about Krypton, rather than the fiction with Angleos Michaelides at next week's Chemistry in its Element. I'm Chris Smith, thank you for listening and goodbye. (Promo) Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com . There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements . (End promo) h2g2 - The Elements: Names and Origins - O-Z - Edited Entry The Elements: Names and Origins Osmium (76Os) Osmium was identified in 1803 by Smithson Tennent. Its oxide is volatile and has a sharp smell. For this reason the element was named after the Greek word 'osme' meaning 'smell'. Oxygen (8O) Oxygen was identified in the 1770s by Joseph Priestley and Carl-Wilhelm Scheele.

Priestley is credited with the identification of the element because he published his results first, in 1774, whereas Scheele's publication was delayed and only appeared in 1777. The name was given by Antoine Lavoisier in 1776, who thought oxygen was responsible for the acidity of acids (see The History of Acids and Bases ). 'Oxein' is the Greek word for 'sour' and 'gennan' means 'to form, to generate'. Oxygen had been isolated before by many scientists - for example, it is known that Oluf Bayen and Pierre Borch prepared oxygen in the early 1730s. They did not, however, recognise oxygen as an element. Even older descriptions of oxygen - as a component of air - are known, as references by Leonardo da Vinci, Empedocles and the 8th Century Chinese philosopher Mao Khoa demonstrate. Palladium (46Pd) Palladium was named in 1803 after Pallas the asteroid, which was discovered in 1802 and is itself named after Pallas Athene, the Greek goddess of art and wisdom.

The identification is credited to William Wollaston. Phosphorus (15P) Phosphorus was isolated in 1669 by Henning Brandt from urine. Brandt noticed that the element glows in the dark and thus gave it the name 'phosphorus' which is derived from the Greek for 'light-bearing'. Platinum (78Pt) Platinum was known of and used by pre-Columbian Indians. Spanish mathematician Don Antonio de Ulloa named the metal 'platina' meaning 'silver-like' or 'little silver' in 1748. The metal had been noticed earlier by explorers of the New World, but was not considered to have any value. A sample of this metal was described in 1557 by Julius Caesar Scaliger. The metal was isolated in its pure form in 1750 by William Brownrigg. The identification of the metal as being a new element is usually credited to Sir William Watson, also in 1750. Plutonium (94Pu) Plutonium is named after planet Pluto, which is named after Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld.

The naming follows the same order as with the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto which were the inspiration behind the names of the elements. In the periodic table the order is the same: uranium, neptunium and plutonium. Plutonium occurs in traces in uranium ores, most plutonium, however, is prepared synthetically in nuclear reactors. It was synthesised for the first time by Glenn T Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Joseph Kennedy and Arthur Wahl in 1940. Polonium (84Po) Polonium is named after Poland, the native country of Marie Curie who identified the element with Pierre Curie in 1898. Potassium (19K) Potassium is named after 'pot-ash' or Dutch 'pot-aschen'. Plant ashes, which were obtained by burning vegetal material in a pot, contain sodium and potassium carbonate, two alkaline compounds often used to make soap . The symbol K is derived from the Latin word 'kalium' which comes from the Arab word 'alqali' which means 'to roast' (ie, plants in pots).

Potassium was known for a long time in the form of potassium carbonate, but it was identified as an element and isolated for the first time in 1807 by Humphry Davy. 'Potassium' is used in English, Celtic and Italic languages whereas 'Kalium' is used by most other languages. Praseodymium (59Pr) Praseodymium comes from 'praseios' which is Greek for 'light green' and 'didymos' which is Greek for 'twin'. Praseodymium is therefore the 'greenish twin'. Twin? The story is rather long, because many of the so-called rare-earth metals occur together as a mixture. Before the entire mixture was separated into all its elements, a sub-mixture was isolated by Carl Gustav Mosander in the 1840s. Mosander believed that it contained an element, which he called 'didymium' (ie, twin) because it always occurred together with lanthanum. Some other folks thought it was named 'twin' because all his children were born as twins.

In 1885, Carl Auer von Welsbach managed to separate this didymium into two further elements, one of which he called 'the new twin' (see neodymium) and the other one 'praseodymium' because of the greenish colour of its oxide. Promethium (61Pm) Promethium was long sought-after, and with the implementation of the periodic table it already had its place as element 61 in the row of the rare-earth metals. However, it had never been isolated or identified in any mineral. All claims of 'discovery' were discarded in 1941 when it was shown that the element does not occur in natural minerals. Instead it was prepared synthetically in 1945 by Charles D Coryell, Jacob A Marinsky, Lawrence E Glendenin and Harold G Richter. They named it after the mythological figure Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods and was punished - an allusion to the pros and cons of nuclear reactions. Protactinium (91Pa) Protactinium has been, since 1949, shorthand for 'protoactinium'.

The name describes its decay to actinium ('proto' is Greek for 'first'). The element was identified by Kasimir Fajans and Otto H Göhring in 1913. Radium (88Ra) Radium was isolated and identified by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They named it 'radium' because its radiation is millions of times stronger than anything they had observed before. Radon (86Rn) Radon was observed by many of those scientists studying radioactivity at the turn of the 19th Century. The first clear mention of this element is found in Pierre and Marie Curie's work. They observed a gas emanating from a radium solution, which they called 'Radium Emanation' which later on mutated to 'radon'. Other scientists soon found that thorium and actinium solutions also produced a radioactive gaseous emanation, called thoron and actinon, respectively. It became clear only in 1910 that these emanations were the same element. Ramsay suggested calling it 'niton' (from Latin 'nitens' meaning 'to shine').

However, in 1949, when all nomenclature had to become official, 'radon' was the most widely-used name for this element, and was therefore kept. Rhenium (75Re) Rhenium is named after the river Rhine and the Rhineland, Germany, where Ida Eva Tacke was born. The element was identified by Masataka Ogawa in 1908, and originally called 'nipponium'. The story goes like this: The periodic table was already an established piece of work in the early 1900s. However, it still had some gaps in it for elements that had not been discovered. In that time, elements 43 and 75 were among the last elements missing in the main table. Ogawa isolated the metal but erroneously assigned it to element 43 instead of 75. Later on in 1925, Walter Noddack and Ida Eva Tacke, who later became Mrs Noddack, announced the identification of the two missing elements, which they called 'masurium' (43) and 'rhenium' (75) after the places of their births.

The identification of masurium was never confirmed. Rhodium (45Rh) Rhodium forms rose-coloured compounds. William Hyde Wollaston identified the element in 1803 and noticed that property. He therefore called the element 'rhodium' from the Greek word 'rhodon' for 'rose'. Rubidium (37Rb) Rubidium has deep-red emission lines in its spectrum. These lines were used by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen to identify the element in 1861. For that reason it was named after the Latin word 'rubidis' for 'deep-red'. Bunsen isolated the metal in 1863. Ruthenium (44Ru) Ruthenium was isolated in 1828 from platinum ore by a Russian chemist called Gottfried Osann, who called it 'ruthenium' after the Latin word for Russia, 'Ruthenia'. He withdrew his claim of 'discovery'. In 1844 Karl Klaus, another Russian, showed that Osann had been right, and retained the name for the element.

Samarium (62Sm) Samarium is a rare-earth metal found mixed together with other rare-earth metals in many minerals. It was named after the mineral samarskite, in which it occurs. Samarskite is named after Colonel von Samarski, a Russian mine officer. Samarium was identified in 1879 by Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Scandium (21Sc) Scandium was found in an ytterbium containing mineral from Scandinavia (hence the rather obvious name) by Lars-Frederik Nilson in 1879. Selenium (34Se) Selenium is a metal and it was isolated in 1817 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius while he was trying to purify tellurium (another metal). Since tellurium is named after the Roman goddess of the earth Telles, the new element was named after the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene. Silicon (14Si) Silicon is named after the Latin world for the mineral flint, 'silex' or 'silicis', in which it occurs.

It was isolated from flint by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1824. It was originally named 'silicium' with the suffix '-ium' to emphasise it is a metal. Later it was proven that silicium is not a metal, and for that reason the suffix was replaced by '-on' to avoid confusion. Silver (79Ag) Silver was used widely as far back as prehistoric times. The old Sanskrit word 'argunas', meaning 'shining brightly', mutated into the Latin word 'argentum' from which the symbol 'Ag' is derived. The word 'silver' is of obscure Anglo-Saxon origin. Sodium (11Na) Sodium had been known for a long time in the form of soda (sodium carbonate). The term 'soda', which was used by Humphry Davy as the basis to call the element he had isolated in 1807 from soda, sodium, comes from the Latin term sodanum which means 'remedy for headache', which was one of the things the Romans used soda for.

The white powder itself, which was also successfully employed to make soap, was called natrum by the Romans, which is why the element's symbol is Na. In most languages, except for English and Italic languages, the element is also called natrium. The term 'natrum', used by the Romans, has Arabic roots and was originally from the Egyptian word for soda, which is spelled like this: 'nTrj'. Nitre (or saltpeter) which gave origin to the name 'nitrogen', has the same root here. Strontium (38Sr) Strontium had been recognised by Thomas Hope in 1792 in a mineral called strontianite, which occurs near the Scottish town of Strontian (which gives the element its name). Humphry Davy isolated the metal in 1808. Sulphur (16S) Sulphur was known from ancient times. The official spelling changed from 'sulphur' to 'sulfur' because most people didn't want to use the 'ph'. The origin of the English word is the Latin word 'sulphurium' which comes from Sanskrit 'sulveri'.

Louis Thenard and Louis Gay-Lussac showed that sulphur was an element in 1809. Tantalum (73Ta) Tantalum is not soluble in acids. It was isolated and named by Anders Ekeberg in 1802: Ekeberg must have had a fertile imagination and was obviously versed in Greek mythology. He named the element after Tantalos, the father of Niobe (see niobium, above), who was banished to Hades, where he was placed up to his chin in water, directly beneath branches of fruit. Whenever Tantalos raised or lowered his head to pick a fruit or to drink the water, the branches would draw back and the water would recede. He was not able to eat or drink anything, just as the element is not able to take up any acid. Now that was far-fetched, wasn't it? Technetium (43Tc) Technetium was a long sought-after element. Claims for its 'discovery' date back to 1828. None of the claims, however, were ever confirmed.

It was finally synthesised in 1937 by Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier, and is thus an artificial element. The element was named after the Greek word techous which means 'artificial'. Originally it was to be called 'panormium' after the Latin word for Palermo, where it was synthesized. Segre and Perrier, however, did not like the idea and opted for a more neutral term. Tellurium (52Te) Tellurium was named after the Roman goddess of the earth, Telles. It was identified by mine director Franz Müller von Richtenstein in 1782, working in a Transsylvanian mine, as a new 'problematic metal'. Von Richtenstein was not, however, able to characterise it any further. Paul Kitaibel working with Hungarian minerals also found a 'problematic metal', which he couldn't characterise further, in 1789. Both Müller and Kitaibel sent their samples and reports to chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who finally concluded that it was a new element in 1798.

Terbium (65Tb) Terbium has its name derived form Ytterby, the site of a quarry in Sweden. For more information, see Erbium (above). Thallium (81Tl) Thallium emits a sharp green line in its emission spectrum, and was named after the Greek word for 'twig', thallos. It was identified in 1861 by William Crookes and isolated in 1862 by Claude-Auguste Lamy. Thorium (90Th) Thorium forms a mineral called 'thorite' (thorium silicate). The mineral was found on the island of Løvø, Norway by Hans Morten Thrane Esmark, who sent a sample to his father Jens Esmark, who was a geology professor in Norway. He in turn sent a specimen to Jöns-Jakob Berzelius, who found out in 1828 that it was a new mineral and that this new mineral contained a new element. He called the mineral thorite, and the element thorium after Thor, the Nordic god of thunder.

The element was isolated from thorite by D Lely Jr and L Hamburger in 1914. Thulium (69Tm) Thulium was named after Thule, which is the old designation for the northern part of what the Greeks thought to be the habitable world, not necessarily Scandinavia. It was identified in 1879 by Per Theodor Cleve, who thought that the Greek designation thule corresponded to Scandinavia. The element was isolated by Charles James in 1911. Tin (50Sn) Tin was known of as far back as prehistoric times. In antiquity, tin was already recognised as one of the elementary metals. It was used to make an alloy with copper, also known as bronze, which is easier to cast and harder (than copper) in its solid state. Initially, the metal was associated with Jupiter or Zeus and named accordingly, along the lines of 'Jupiter's element'. Later on, the element became named on the basis of it melting easily. The Latin name stannum is connected to the Indo-European fragment stag, also found in 'stagnation' which means 'to drip'.

The Latin word stannum is also the origin of the element's symbol 'Sn'. The word mutated somewhat naturally into estanno which gave the Spanish estaño and Portuguese estanho. The French word etain already has the 's' dropped. The German word Zinn comes from reversing 'st' to 'ts', or stinn to tsinn. It is not clear whether the English word 'tin' comes from etain or from Zinn - or from both. Titanium (22Ti) Titanium has its obvious origin in the Titans who were, according to Greek mythology, the first sons of the earth. In 1791, William Gregor found the element in Ilmenite (iron titanate), which he had called menachanite (as the mineral had been discovered by him in the Menachan Valley, Cornwall). The element he thus called menachin, but Gregor was not sure about it. In 1795, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who knew Gregor's work, confirmed that it was an element. He chose, however, to give it the name titanium - because the element did not have any significant properties (like smell or colour) he could name it after.

The metal was isolated by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1825. Tungsten (74W) Tungsten derives from the Swedish tung sten which means 'heavy stone.' Tungsten also used to be the name of the mineral in which the element occurs (calcium wolframate), which forms very heavy stones, bit was it was later known as Scheelite in honour of Carl Wilhelm Scheele. The element also occurs in another mineral called wolframite (iron and manganese wolframate), from which it takes its official symbol and worldwide most common name, wolfram or wolframium (even in Sweden the element is called volfram). The name 'wolframite' comes from the German translation of lupi spuma ('Wolf Rahm') which means 'wolf's foam'. This name was given as during the extraction process it 'eats' tin like a wolf eats sheep. Tungsten was isolated by Don Fausto d'Elhuy in 1783, but it was already identified as an element by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1781.

In 1951 the IUPAC decided to officially name the element 'wolframium', which caused some protest from the scientific community. The protest led IUPAC to reverse its decision and start a revision process for the naming of the element. The issue is still not resolved. Uranium (92U) Uranium was identified by Martin-Heinrich Klaproth in 1789. He named it after the planet Uranus, which is named after the Roman deity Uranus. The planet was observed for the first time by William Hershel some years earlier, in 1781. Metallic uranium was obtained for the first time by Eugene Peligot in 1841. Vanadium (23V) Vanadium forms many different-coloured compounds and was identified in 1830 by Nils-Gabriel Sefstrom in Sweden. For this reason it was named after the Nordic goddess of love and beauty, Freya Vanadis. The element had been observed decades earlier, in 1801, by mineralogist Andres Manuel del Rio y Fernandez, who also noted the colourful variety of compounds formed by vanadium.

He called the element erythronium, after the colourful flowers of the plant erythronia. Later, Fernandez suspected that the colourful compounds were in reality due to chromium and withdrew his claims to have identified a new element. Posthumously, the sample Fernadez gave was re-examined and was shown to have contained vanadium. The metal was first isolated in 1869 by Henry Enfield Roscoe. Xenon (54Xe) Xenon was identified quite late on, in 1898, due to technical problems. Xenon is an inert gas, and cannot be isolated using chemical tricks. It has to be distilled out of air, in which it is only present in small amounts. William Ramsay and Morris Travers liquefied air and obtained some of its components by fractional distillation. One of the fractions was liquefied Xenon gas, which they thought was 'strange' and xenos is Greek for 'strange'. Ytterbium (70Yb) Ytterbium has its name derived form Ytterby, the site of a quarry in Sweden. For more information see Erbium (above).

Yttrium (39Y) Yttrium has its name derived form Ytterby, the site of a quarry in Sweden. For more information see Erbium (above). Zinc (30Zn) Zinc was known of as far back as prehistoric times and was available as a metal as early as 1374, but was only identified as an element in 1746 by Andreas Marggraf. Many origins for the name have been suggested. The most plausible is that the name comes from the German word Zink or Zinke which translates to 'tine or sharp edge'. The mineral calamine (zinc carbonate) from which the metal can be obtained has many sharp edges. Another source suggests that 'zink' was used to denote an element that is 'not entirely unlike' Zinn which is the name for tin in German. Zirconium (40Zr) Zirconium forms, as a silicate, semi-precious gemstones and has been known about since antiquity. The Persian word zargun, for these stones, meaning gold-like, denotes their yellow-ish colour. In Arabic the 'g' mutated into a 'k' giving the word zarkun.

The element was only discovered in 1789 by Martin Heinrich Klaproth who examined a sample of earth coming from Ceylon. His friend and geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner found that the examined batch was mainly zircon (silex circonius), and thus the name of the element was 'zirconium'. The metal was isolated by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1824. The Mythological Origins Of 5 Elements From The Periodic Table - tribunedigital-thecourant The Mythological Origins Of 5 Elements From The Periodic Table Word Watch May 30, 2013|By ROB KYFF, Special To The Courant, The Hartford Courant A few weeks ago I explained how five chemical elements came to be named for Greek and Roman gods. Let's feast again at the periodic table and discover the mythological origins of five more elements. "Tantalum'' – When Tantalus, a mortal son of Zeus, shared his father's secrets with ordinary humans, his father punished him by placing him in fresh water up to his chin and dangling luscious fruits above his head. Doesn't sound so bad, right?

But every time Tantalus stooped to quaff his thirst, the water drained away. And when he reached for the fruit, it moved upward beyond his grasp. This excruciating torture inspired the English word "tantalize." In 1814, the Swedish chemist Anders Eckeberg discovered a new metal that could be placed in strong acid without "drinking" it, that is, reacting with it. So his fellow Swedish chemist Jöns Berzelius, remembering the perpetually parched Tantalus, dubbed the new element "tantalum." "Niobium'' — At about the same time, the English chemist Charles Hatchett discovered a new metal, right here in Connecticut. He dubbed it "columbium," after "Columbia," a term for the United States. But other scientists claimed that columbiun was identical to tantalum and wasn't new at all. This dispute was resolved in 1846 when German chemist Heinrich Rose determined that columbium was indeed a new element. But because it resembled tantalum so closely, Rose dubbed it "niobium" after Tantalus' weeping daughter, Niobe.

American scientists stuck with "columbium" for a while, but "niobium" eventually prevailed. "Selenium'' — Another mythological daughter also gave her name to an element. Selene, the daughter of Hyperion, was the Greek goddess of the moon. In 1818 the aforementioned Berzelius discovered a new element very similar to tellurium. Because "tellurium" had been named for Tellus, the Roman goddess of the earth, Berzelius strove for balance by calling its sister element "selenium" for the goddess of the moon. "Neptunium and Plutonium'' — In 1940 chemists at the University of California produced two new radioactive elements derived from uranium (which had been named in 1788 for Uranus, the Roman god of the sky). So, following the order of the planets, they named the newcomers "neptunium" (for Neptune, Roman god of the sea) and "plutonium" (for Pluto, Greek god of the underworld). Though Pluto is no longer considered a planet, its namesake element abides.

MORE: Elements Named for Celestial Bodies Elements Named for Celestial Bodies The element selenium is named for the moon. Here’s an alphabetical list of elements named for astronomical objects, or perhaps from the gods/goddesses for which the objects were named. Most names come from planets, the moon, and the sun, since these objects are easily seen in the sky. Cerium – Ceres, the first asteroid to be discovered. Roman goddess of grain, similar to the Greek’s Demeter. Helium – Helios, the Greek name for the Sun Mercury – Mercury, a planet. Winged Roman god of travel. Neptunium – Neptune, a blue planet. Roman god of the sea. Palladium – Pallas, the second asteroid to be discovered. Greek name given to Athena after she killed a playmate named Pallas or, according to some legends, the giant Pallas. Palladium was also the name of a sacred image kept in the temple of Athena at Troy. Plutonium – Pluto, a planet. Roman god of the underworld, said to be able to render himself invisible. Selenium – Selene, the Greek name for the Moon. Tellurium – Tellus, the Latin name for the Earth.

Roman earth goddess; also called Terra Mater, similar to the Greek’s Gaea. Uranium – Uranus, a planet. Greek god of the heavens, son of Gaea. Elements Named for Celestial Bodies Last modified: July 19th, 2014 by Anne Helmenstine Share this: How did the chemical elements get their names? | OxfordWords blog Home > How did the chemical elements get their names? How did the chemical elements get their names? Etymologically , chemical elements are in a class of their own. Unlike much of the English language, the names of elements tend to have been chosen by the researchers who first discovered them rather than developing organically over time. There are no rules as to how these names are decided, but the history of chemistry reveals some quite fascinating trends… People and places Many are the people who, for their contributions to science, have been honoured with an element named after them.

Among the most illustrious are Nicolaus Copernicus (copernicum, Cn), first to publish the outrageous suggestion that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth; Alfred Nobel (nobelium, No), best known for inventing dynamite and founding the Nobel prizes, and Albert Einstein (Einsteinium, Es), who developed the general theory of relativity. Some names took a detour through other languages: gallium, Ga, was named after its French discoverer Lecoq, whose name translates to ‘the cockerel’ in English, ‘gallus’ in Latin. Another trend is for researchers to name new elements after a place. European nations and cities get the most recognition, often as the places where elements were first discovered or out of the researchers’ sense of patriotism . A few places receive recognition that seems perhaps disproportionate to their size, such as the village of Strontian in the Scottish Highlands where strontium (Sr) was mined, or Ytterby on the Swedish island of Resarӧ, which gave its name to no fewer than four elements: ytterbium (Yb), yttrium (Y), terbium (Tb), and erbium (Er).

The last three are intended to reflect the decreasing strength of the metal oxides by using decreasing proportions of the original word. Metals and mythology You are probably aware that the planets in our solar system take their names from the Roman names of the classical gods. What you might not know is that each planet was further associated with a metal: gold (Au) with the Sun, iron (Fe) with Mars, mercury (Hg) with – you guessed it – Mercury, and so on. This trend was picked up by researchers in the 19th and early 20th century, so that a number of elements get their names ‘second-hand’, as it were, from Classical mythology . Cerium (Ce) was named in 1804 after the recently discovered asteroid Ceres , in turn named after the classical goddess of agriculture. Pallas , the next asteroid to be discovered, which was named after the goddess Pallas Athena, gave its name to palladium (Pd).

Martin Heinrich Klaproth , a German chemist at the turn of the 19th century, set off quite a chain of events with the naming of element 92 (uranium, U) after the god and planet Uranus in 1790. He named titanium (Ti) after the Titans , by analogy with uranium’s naming after the god, and named tellurium (Te) after the Earth (Latin tellus) by analogy with uranium’s naming after the planet. In 1818, J. J. Berzelius chose the name selenium (Se), from the Greek selene for ‘moon’, for his newly discovered element, on the basis of its similar chemical properties to tellurium. A century and a half later, Enrico Fermi revived the trail by naming neptunium (Np), the element which comes after uranium in the periodic table, after the next planet in the solar system. Finally, in 1942, Seaborg & Wahl chose the name plutonium (Pu) for element 94, again reflecting the order of the planets (or what was then considered a planet).

Anders Ekeburg, a Swedish chemist, decided to follow the trend but with a slightly more imaginative twist. The element he had discovered in 1802, unlike many metals, was unable to absorb acid . Thus he chose to name it after the Greek mythological character Tantalus , eternally condemned to stand in a pool of water up to his chin that receded when he bent towards, so that he was never able to take a drink (tantalum, Ta). When German researcher Heinrich Rose discovered a further element with very similar properties to tantalum, he named the element after Tantalus’s daughter Niobe , famous for being turned to stone as punishment for her pride (niobium, Nb). Not to be outdone, of course, various Norse gods also make an appearance, with Thor , the hammer-bearing god of thunder, giving his name to thorium (Th), while vanadium (V) takes its name from Vanadís, Freyja, the goddess of fertility. Political chemistry In an interesting turn of events, several elements got their naming caught up in the intricacies of the Cold War .

The so-called ‘Transfermium Wars’ (where ‘transfermium’ refers to the elements following fermium in the periodic table) arose as a result of a dispute between Soviet researchers in Dubna and American researchers in Berkeley as to who first discovered the elements 104, 105, and 106. Traditionally, the naming rights of an element go to those who discovered it; but in the climate of general distrust between the two nations, establishing who the discoverers were was not an easy task. Mirroring the events outside the world of chemistry research, an international organization – the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, formed in 1919 – stepped in to mediate, with eventual agreement in 1997, long after the end of the Cold War itself. The Dubna lab was recognized in its own element (dubnium, Db) – Berkeley already had its name enshrined in chemical nomenclature with berkelium, Bk, named in 1950.

The most recent names honoured included Nobel laureates Ernest Rutherford , a key player in the development of nuclear physics, and Glenn Seaborg, unusual for having had an element named after him while he was still alive. A few fun facts to leave you with… The supposed element didymium was named after the Greek word for ‘twin’, because of its close association with lanthanium. Ironically, it was later discovered to be itself composed of two metals, neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr). Nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) were both named by disgruntled German-speaking miners. Nickel is named after a michievous spirit inhabiting mines, because the mined ore which apparently contained copper turned out not to. Cobalt comes from the German Kobold , ‘goblin’, so named because it didn’t produce the hoped-for metal ore but did produce dangerous arsenic fumes. Radium (Ra), discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898, was used variously as a trade name for hosiery, boot polish, and fabric. It is still used to designate a woven fabric with a slight shine.

Phosphorus (P) was named after the Morning Star, because it spontaneously ignites on contact with air. Aluminium (Al) was named first alumium and later aluminum by its discoverer (H. Davy), but not aluminium – this form first appears in a review of one of his lectures. The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press. Author Melissa Russon works for Oxford Dictionaries. Published

Question: Which element is named after the Greek for ‘moon’?
Answer: SELENIUM